$40 adapter lets you enjoy audiobooks AND charge your iPhone 7 at once

Happy ereading or audiobooking! Just the same, at $649 and up even for the version with a skimpy 32G of flash memory, the 7 series is too pricey for me.

Beyond that, Apple has killed off the analogue audio jack, in favor of use of the Lightning port for audio.

Ouch! What if you want to listen to audiobooks and charge your iPhone 7 at the same time?

The 7 comes with a free Apple adapter that plugs into your Lightning port and works with regular audio phones. But still no good, if you want to charge simultaneously through the port.

You could consider $159 wireless Apple AirPods (easily misplaced ear buds), Bluetooth phones, or a Bluetooth adapter for the Lightning port to use with regular phones—except that all of them need recharging.

The Belkin adapter will plug into the Lightning port and let you charge the iPhone and simultaneously listen to Lightning phones or, via the free Apple adapter, a pair of analogue phones.

Still, Apple’s omission of the analogue jack is a form of user abuse. It reminds me of Amazon’s outrageous refusal to include all-text bold and a wide range of other typographical options in Kindles, or to allow third-party fonts, the way Kobo ereaders do.

I know. Apple wants the iPhone to be waterproof and thin. But for most users, an analogue phone jack would count a lot more. While I’m glad the Belkin adapter is around, I’m grumpy that people must rely on it in the first place.

A lot of others feel the same way. The ideal scenario would be for Apple to repent and bring back the analogue jack in a “new improved” model.

Meanwhile here’s a reminder of the obvious. You can buy a used or reconditioned model rather than rewarding Apple for its arrogance in this case.

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Published by David Rothman

David Rothman is the founder and publisher of the TeleRead e-book site and cofounder of LibraryCity.org. He is also author of The Solomon Scandals novel and six tech-related books on topics ranging from the Internet to laptops. Passionate on digital divide issues, he is now pushing for the creation of a national digital library endowment.
View all posts by David Rothman

[sarcasm]Perhaps Google will resurrect its modular phone and call it the retro-phone or rPhone for short. With so many people hankering for a Model-T of mobile phones its a wonder that they canned it. Perhaps there are just not enough atavists to make this feasible.[/sarcasm]

Now that conspiracy theorizing is in resurgence, we are hearing that deleting the headphone jack in favor of wireless is simply another step in the quest to eliminate the “analog gap” that can be used for illicit copying. I’m not buying this one b/c even a 100% digital path that terminates in speakers that send vibes through the air is subject to being recorded.

The tech world needs an award for the stupidest move by a major company. Apple would win hands down for this one. Even the arguments advanced by company executives are either stupid or (more likely) assume their customers are stupid.

To hear them talk, you’d think Bluetooth headsets was a new technology, one so marvelous that the company feels compel to ride roughshod over a handful of cranky Luddites who’re fighting progress. “Everything is going wireless,” they say as if a dogma like that could overrule good sense. Not so.

Bluetooth headsets are an old technology. On iPhones, they must be at least six years old. And what’s the market penetration? From what I’ve seen in Seattle and my little college town, it’s less that 20%. People are quite aware of what they offer and have concluded that the hassles outweigh the benefits. And keep in mind that’s for the well-designed, mature technology sold by other vendors, not the dreadful and overpriced Ives’s design with two expensive and easily dropped or lost earpieces.

Most iPhone owners are NOT interested in Bluetooth headsets and Apple knows that.
This isn’t about making customers happy. It’s about making rich Apple executives even richer. It’s about forcing iPhone users to buy Bluetooth headsets from Apple or the Apple-owned Beats. Indeed, when Apple bought Beats, my first thought was that the company would be trying to come up with ways to force iPhone users to buy Beats headsets. Here it is. Welcome to the “People in Marketing are Creeps 101” principle: “If people won’t buy something of their own free will, force them to do so.”

In short, it’s not about the technology. Bluetooth headsets have been tried and found wanting. It’s about the money. It’s also why Apple makes RAM non-upgradable and ships their base products with too little RAM. It wants to charge customers four times the market price for a decent amount of RAM. That’s not advancing technology. If Apple cared about that, they’d be leading the field in shipping all their products with above average RAM and storage.

This is deja vu for me. Back in the mid-1980s, I proofed documentation for Microsoft’s system division (think DOS). It ticked me off that Microsoft was so far behind the technology curve. At a time when 20 Meg (yes Meg not Tetra) hard drives were becoming inadequate, DOS only supported drives up to 32 Meg. To get more capacity you had to kludge with drivers.

Apple is getting like that. I’ve used Macs since 1990, and I can recall when Apple products cost more but provided more. In recent years that’s flipped entirely. Now Apple products offer less than their competitors (RAM, storage, ports, and connectivity). Yet Apple continues to charge more. And no, all the silly artistic blabbing from Ives about “simplicity” can’t conceal the fact that Apple is offering products with less so it can sell—at a huge markup—enhancements that merely make their products adequate.

I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I could probably cope with a Tim Cook who says, “Yes, we’re a bunch of greedy SOBs who’re just in this for the money and care not about you or the hassles we create.” I could even endure, although not listen to a Jonathan Ives who conceeds in interviews, “Yes, I know my artistic blatter about simplicity is nonsense. But it does trick fools into buying our increasingly stripped down products just because they are thin.”
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In passing, I might remark that this is but a small slice of what’s happening here and in Europe. Both are splitting into two cultures, with one being elitist and sneering in private at ordinary people. That’s why no one of importance in Cologne, from the (female) mayor, to the police and the local news media thought it worth mentioning that over 600 young (but not elite) women were sexually assaulted in the city square on New Year’s Eve. It’s why they sneered at Briexit and were outraged when it passed. It’s why all Hillary’s lying doesn’t shake their zeal to get her elected. Lying to what she terms “deplorables” is acceptable in their eyes. And last but not least, it’s why Apple executives pulled the most-used physical feature on iPhones, that headset jack.

What is the most telling illustration of what’s wrong with this country? It came when our Attorney General, traveling by a taxpayer-funded private jet, met on board with Bill Clinton, whose own private jet, parked nearby, was probably funded by the tax-exempt Clinton Foundation. In her plane they agreed—many of us suspect—that his wife wouldn’t be prosecuted for security violations that’s send the rest of us to prison for perhaps twenty years. And yes, they do like private jets. Even traveling first class involves more mixing with the public than they can tolerate.

In that sort of world, losing a headphone jack seems small potatoes, but the connection is there. German women who want to be safe at night are in the same boat as iPhone users who want a headphone jack. But the feelings of neither matter to those who consider themselves their ‘betters.’ You might call them the Snooties.

@Michael: I’m with you on class, snobbery and Apple. You’re so right. I love certain features of my iPad, such as the optimal-readability mode that can give me all-text bold. And I want the wide range of apps available! But oh how overpriced the iProducts have become! And, yes, the loss of the headphone jack is another way to pick customers’ pockets. We’ll agree to disagree with the Clinton email server (a bad mistake but nothing compared to Trump’s constant lapses in judgment) and some other stuff.